Students, community protest coal financers

Amid the flurries of our current political climate, a handful of Towson students sought to educate citizens of injustices taking place by national banking companies in Baltimore.

Baltimore Rising Tide, an environmental activist collective, protested on street corners in the financial district downtown, outside of Citi Bank and Bank of America.

The protest was part of a series of demonstrations taking place throughout the day, in opposition of the respective banks' investments in coal.

"It's necessary because coal is really detrimental to a lot of communities, especially from where it's extracted from, specifically places in Appalachia where the runoff from coal gets into the drinking water and shower water of the residents who live in the area," Heather Kangas, junior political science major, said.

"In Baltimore City, where there are definitely coal power plants, it contributes to those residents having respiratory issues…and it also contributes to the carbon emissions in the atmosphere, so it's also a climate issue."

About 35 people including Towson students, students from other Baltimore schools and community members brandished a variety of signs and attempted to educate passersby to their cause.

"I think we introduced people to the idea of banks funding something that's bad for their health… I think we introduced to them that clean coal is a dirty lie," Kangas said.

The group's actions resulted in at least three non-members closing their Bank of America accounts, according to Kangas.

Baltimore Rising Tide started in August. The goal of the group is to link current political and economical crises to affects on climate change. Kangas said the protest in front of Citi Bank and Bank of America was ironic because some people were already displeased with the government's corporate bailout strategy.

Signs that read, "bail out the climate, not our banks," and "cashing in on climate change" written in the style of Bank of America's sign, coupled with caution tape masking outdoor ATMs aide in the group's cause.

"I think it went really great. We had a great turnout from Towson, there was a lot of energy, and the cops didn't mess with us too much," Amanda Duzak, senior environmental science and studies major, said.

She mentioned that Bank of America security tore down the caution tape. Duzak admitted to walking the fine line between legal and illegal activity.

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above: